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| Passion Investments: Collectibles |
Brazil Nuts
David Kaufman
01/01/2005
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On a balmy autumn evening last year, a crowd of sharp-eyed and sharply dressed design-world insiders descended upon a furniture gallery in Manhattan’s Tribeca. Assembled for yet another contemporary furniture exhibition opening, the crowd sipped wine and mixed and mingled while paying honor to the show’s most important pieces, as well as their man-of-the-hour creator. The pieces included a sturdy, brown, wood and Formica desk for $12,000, a black, upholstered sofa for $30,000, chairs for $6,500 and a bench for $10,000. Collectors are often prepared to pay such prices for top-of-the-line French pieces by the likes of Jean Prouve or rare works from American icons Ray and Charles Eames. Only these items were not French, American or even Italian. They were made by a little-known designer named Sergio Rodrigues, from Brazil.
 | | WOODEN VASES from Espasso. (Photograph courtesy of Espasso.) |
Yes, Brazil. With fans ranging from farsighted collectors to chic architects and interior designers, fine Brazilian furniture is quickly evolving from a mere curiosity into a true design phenomenon. As the recent Rodrigues show demonstrates, Brazilian design is not of the low-quality, high-volume variety sometimes associated with talent from the developing world. Rather, “These are pieces of amazing quality that can translate well into any interior,” explains Victoria Thiessen, assistant vice president of the 20th-century design department at Sotheby’s. “This work is hard to find and in many cases is only getting rarer,” she says. “We are seeing extremely robust prices for this work, that [are generally] remaining steady and strong.”
 | | GAIVOTA ARMCHAIR by Ricardo Fasanello, circa 1971. (Photograph courtesy of Espasso.) |
Like many contemporary design enthusiasts, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn discovered Brazilian furniture almost by accident. A devotee of international furniture fairs and the very latest auction catalogs, the New York gallery owner noticed individual Brazilian pieces hidden among the better-known names of the design world. For someone with an already impressive modern furniture collection, Rohatyn is not the type who regularly stumbles upon an entirely new category of talent. “But this was uncharted territory, brand new to the market,” she says. “The pieces were unusual, elegant and beautifully made, with this chunky, comfortable quality that I had never been able to find before, particularly at these price points.”
 | | FASANELLO’S ARCOS iron and brushed steel coffee table. (Photograph courtesy of Espasso.) |
Design experts are calling these abstract and organic, yet wholly utilitarian, attributes the hallmarks of the Brazilians. And like so much of Brazilian culture, these elements are linked directly to the distinct materials native to the country. Chief among these are Brazilian hardwoods, rare species like jacaranda or rosewood (which was popular just after World War II), as well as hardwoods used today like imbuia, sucupira, freijó and cedro. “Everything in Brazil comes up from the ground and this is what this furniture is all about,” explains Zesty Myers, owner of Manhattan’s R 20th Century gallery, which hosted a recent Rodrigues exhibition. Pairing the sturdiness of these woods with the detailed craftsmanship of Brazil’s designers results in pieces built for use, not just display. New York fashion designer and collector John Bartlett calls it “a wonderful combination of furniture and art.”
The genre divides roughly into two distinct categories. On one side are young designers, such as Etel Carmona, Carlos Motta, the duo Luciana Martins and Gerson de Oliveira, and the Campana brothers, all based in Brazil’s commercial capital of São Paulo. Of this young guard, Humberto and Fernando Campana are generating the most buzz. Currently creating works in both wood and inventive synthetics, the Campanas are designing both for their own studio as well as for major European manufacturers such as Edra, Alessi and Swarovski. Subjects of a recent retrospective at London’s Design Museum and winners of large-scale commissions such as the Italian embassy in Brasilia, the brothers are already well known, as the prices for their work attest.
TOP VIEW
Finely wrought Brazilian furniture has recently piqued the interest of collectors, designers and architects. Typically available at prices far lower than their European counterparts, superlative Brazilian works combine native woods with meticulous craftsmanship to produce pieces that are suddenly in high demand at auction houses and galleries. |
The Moss Gallery in New York, for example, sells their near iconic Favela chair for Edra—crafted from commonplace pinus wood—for $3,200, while their Vermelha chair, a steel shell covered in cotton rope, also for Edra, runs $6,795. Although they work with larger corporations, the Campanas remain more class than mass, insisting on supporting small-scale local suppliers, including those in Brazil’s impoverished favelas, or slums, for their prototypes and private line. “The Campanas are everything that’s good about design right now,” gushes Sotheby’s Thiessen, who applauds the duo’s commitment to their community as well as their aesthetic vision.
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